Alan Dershowitz and the Writers’ Strike of 2007
in the age of the deluge of bullshit, some time need not be wasted
Hear the author’s stellar performance of the text, recorded LIVE on the This Is Hell radio show/podcast:
Dershowitz, Like Me, Is A Contributor Whose Contribution Doesn’t Contribute
The human being does not live by simple grains only. One must sprinkle on the seaweed flakes and sesame seeds, or coat with egg and toss with bowtie pasta, or wrap around beef tongue or pork skin, or spread with Marmite and avocado, or mustard and liverwurst, or nut butter and jelly, or butter and cheese.
So, pardon me if I bought with my own money a $20 cigar. It started out as $16.99, by the way. It’s a splurge for me, and I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I have few enjoyments in this life. I’m a couple years past sixty, and amusements of a more intense nature are beyond the demands my physical constitution can meet.
I know I’m resented for hardly working by those who have worked hard. The truth is, I’ve tried working hard and it hasn’t paid off the way it has for more society-friendly gadflies with less toxic personalities and more attractive midriffs. I’ll admit, the fault is mine. I am not willing to do what it takes to fit into those slinky cocktail dresses nor to trade oral for a crack at the bigtime, or even just for crack. If Wallace Shawn got onto the Lakers, he could practice all he wanted and still never land a sneaker sponsorship. Patton Oswalt, maybe, but he’s got telegenic pheromones that can be conducted electronically. Also, he’s known to be adept at oral.
On the tenth day of this month, an opinion piece came out in the routinely mocked New York Post co-authored by Alan Dershowitz and some other guy. It was ostensibly about the relative innocence or lack of it of “many of Gaza’s civilians.” I haven’t read it, and I won’t, but I assume the subtext is more about Alan’s IBS than anything else, unless perhaps he confesses to sporting one of those RFK, Jr-style brain worms.
Alan Dershowitz, seen here either defending Trump or denying he suffers from brain worms.
Dershowitz has applied his considerable legal expertise to advocation against human rights before. As a Professor Emeritus of Harvard, he is a “veteran soldier” from the war against decent human behavior, and it is through his serial killing of good-faith argument that he merits such Emeritus status.
What follows, edited for length, mostly, is an essay I wrote back in 2007 when the old stool came out in favor of good old-fashioned torture, just like Mama used to make:
I’m in the Writers’ Guild of America (East), and I’m on strike. That means no writing for money, no working Guild jobs, no crossing picket lines, no scabbing. This Is Hell doesn’t count. I can’t research anything for any reason because I might one day use the knowledge in a script written as part of a Guild job. Or worse, I might accidentally divulge that knowledge to a scab, who might then write something based on that knowledge—so it’s safest if I don’t learn anything new. It’s too much of a threat to our collective bargaining power.
Obviously, no one can remain entirely ignorant of what’s going on in the world. Not even the President. Case in point: a friend of mine — playwright, actor, and arts journalist David Isaacson — told me Alan Dershowitz had an op-ed in last week’s Wall Street Journal defending torture. Ordinarily, my learning such information might constitute a breach of union solidarity. I might have begun to wonder what sort of defense Alan Dershowitz had come up with for torture, and there would begin the inevitable process of fantastical and fabulistic invention and imagination—exactly the thing I’m on strike from. I might even be tempted to read Mr. Dershowitz’s op-ed to find out what his argument is.
Luckily, none of that is necessary. I mean, it is, after all, an op-ed by Alan Dershowitz defending torture. It not as if Carrot Top wrote a defense of Stalinism. There can be no fabulistic invention or imagination because there is nothing to spark it. There can be no flights of fancy, because for flight, one needs air, and there can certainly be nothing as substantial as air, not even hot air, in an op-ed by Alan Dershowitz defending torture.
It’s not that I would be unwilling to be persuaded by a persuasive argument written by Alan Dershowitz, it’s just that Alan Dershowitz is zero-percent certain to present one. Be honest. Do you really need to read an op-ed by Alan Dershowitz in favor of torture in order to better inform yourself? Would it help you better participate in our democratic republic? Do you really need to read an op-ed by Alan Dershowitz for any reason whatsoever? Wouldn’t your time be better spent taking a shower? Or chewing tobacco? Or planning a preemptive strike against the Crouton Creatures from the Caesar Salad Planet?
Now, if a horse or a bear wrote an op-ed defending torture, that would something.
But it isn’t merely that Alan Dershowitz isn’t a horse or a bear that makes it so unlikely his op-ed defending torture is in any way worth even a nano-second’s glance. Most of the op-ed writers in the Wall Street Journal aren’t either bears or horses, yet it is certainly possible one or another op-ed piece written by one of them could in fact contain an insight or two.
Who is the person who hears, “Alan Dershowitz has an op-ed defending torture!” and is compelled to immediately rush out and buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal? Is there such a person? If an infinite number of persons had an infinite amount of time to react to the news that Alan Dershowitz had an op-ed defending torture in the Wall Street Journal, even then would there exist someone compelled to rush out and buy a copy? Are you that person? I ask you to look into your soul. Well, if you have a soul, you’ve already answered the question.
One might as well ask, “Is it necessary to read an op-ed by Ozzy Osbourne suggesting we bring back debtors’ prison?” or “Do I really need to read an op-ed by Roseanne Barr advocating infecting the entire population of Maine with polio?” or “Should I take a circular saw and a mirror and attempt to remove the stone of madness from within my head?”
If someone were to stand before me and say, “You should really read Alan Dershowitz’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week. I used to go along with what most of Western Civilization decided in the waning days of the Middle Ages—that torture was nothing more than a brutal way to force a prisoner to admit to absolutely anything an inquisitor wanted to hear, and that it was immoral not merely for the physical mutilation it caused but for the way it was used to support a cruel and perverted system of justice, a system of justice rendered that much crueler by its employment of torture. But now that I’ve read Alan Dershowitz’s op-ed, I think a little torture is a healthy thing.” If someone were to stand before me and make such a statement, I have no doubt Annihilation itself would appear between us as an irreparable wound in the fabric of the universe, which would pull itself inside-out through that rupture, and creation would have to begin again in the hope that that moment would not repeat itself.
Because it is not even the degree to which torture is perceived as bad by this or that reader of Alan Dershowitz’s op-ed, let alone the fact that Alan Dershowitz is neither a horse nor a bear.
Much like the mind’s inability to contemplate complete nothingness, its inability to envision, coming from the pen of Alan Dershowitz, an earth-shattering, or even doughnut-shattering, revelation about why torture is a good thing—here the human rational consciousness encounters a kind of mental “event horizon,” the edge of an intellectual black hole beyond which nothing can exist, not even the wildest hope or fear.
This is knowledge we might call a priori in the context of the human condition. It is in our essence before we even begin to reason. It exists prior to language. I might even go so far as to term it a prerequisite to knowledge itself. It is innate in the fabric of human consciousness, and any consciousness that somehow muddles its way to existence without it can in no way be called human.
It is sad to think of the Wall Street Journal or any other journal on any other street paying for an article which is one hundred percent guaranteed to contain nothing of value whatsoever. Not even a few cheap chuckles.
But even sadder is to picture Alan Dershowitz himself coming to the conclusion that he should write an op-ed defending torture. “Torture is good, I know it is,” he says to himself, pacing the floor in the middle of the night. “I just don’t know why. I can’t think of a single reason that hasn’t already been discarded as BS by every human being who thinks or feels as an ethical, rational member of a society of laws. But can I write an article defending torture without such a reason?” He paces some more. He drinks a gallon of Slivovitz. He injects himself with stupidity serum. He paces some more. Nothing.
“By golly, I’ll do it!” he says, oblivious to the excruciating non-sequitur he’s just uttered. It is a leap of logic that would be admirable in its audacity if its landing place were not the starting line of a sickening race against no one to nowhere.
But it is exactly that very same pointlessness which allows me to discuss Mr. Dershowitz’s op-ed without having to break the kind of mental sweat the writers’ strike forbids. Without it, there would have been no essay this week. So, thank goodness Alan Dershowitz sucks.
Back to today: I don’t care what Dershowitz, or any other witz, thinks about Gaza and whether some people deserve to live. I believe that at this historical moment what is called for is refusal to engage, accept, or participate as much as is humanly possible given the level of one’s ability. I’m sorry if it gives all you over-achievers the sads. I still contribute by withholding my contribution. A boycott is considered an action. And for my efforts, or the withholding of them, I’m damn well rewarding myself with a cigar.
I had a horrible reaction when it got to the part of him drinking Slivovitz. I don't want him to drink it ever again. Good writing.
Booyaaa...love it